Fox News has aired an astounding 86 segments about trans people since Biden took office. Fox continues to spread misinformation about trans athletes and Biden’s pro-LGBTQ policies, reports Media Matters. "There were 33 segments that mentioned Biden’s executive order protecting LGBTQ people from discrimination. Nearly all of these segments misleadingly characterized the order as being solely focused on trans athletes, completely ignoring its broader nondiscrimination protections."

WATCH:

Brutal Crackdown Has Gay and Transgender Egyptians Asking: Is It Time to Leave?
For Mostafa, a gay Egyptian man in his mid-20s, seeing rainbow flags flying at an open-air rock concert in the Arab world’s most populous nation was thrilling. But he had a feeling it wouldn’t end well. Dozens of people have been arrested and put on trial in Egypt in the ensuing crackdown. Some were also beaten and subjected to invasive physical exams, spreading panic in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender circles. Many of Mostafa’s friends are deleting their profiles on cellphone dating apps and scrubbing their social media accounts, which police have long used to ensnare people suspected of being gay or transgender. Some who were at last month’s concert have gone into hiding. There has even been talk of fleeing the country. “The problem is that no one can tell the limit of this crackdown and how far it might go,” said Mostafa, a community activist who asked to be identified by one name, for fear that he too might be swept up by police. “There was an incredible amount of hate speech by the media and by people on social media. Everyone I know is depressed and fearful.” MORE

Earlier this year in February the Human Rights Campaign presented actor Evan Rachel Wood (Westworld) with the HRC Visibility Award at the 2017 HRC North Carolina Gala. She spoke of the importance of being seen & heard and shared powerful remarks about bisexual visibility. It was a beautiful speech! I was so inspired by her story. She spoke her truth and it was incredibly moving.

Written by Will Kohler


In 1960 every state in America had an anti-sodomy law on its books.

One of the biggest steps toward gay equality, the end of America’s sodomy laws, began on November 17, 1998 when a 911 operator received a call about “a black male going crazy with a gun” at John Geddes Lawrence’s home in the Houston suburbs. Harris County sheriff’s deputies responded and entered Lawrence’s unlocked apartment. There, they purportedly found Lawrence and Tyron Garner engaging in consensual sex.

What they actually found is a matter of debate. Lawrence and Garner weren’t lovers — in fact, that false report had been phoned in by Garner’s actual lover, Robert Eubanks, who suspected Garner and Lawrence were having an affair.

Lawrence and Garner were arrested, held in jail overnight, and charged with violating Section 21.06 of the Texas Penal Code. That law, otherwise known as the Texas Homosexual Conduct law, prohibited engaging “in deviant sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex.”
READ MORE

Written by Christianna Silva

A case is headed to the Supreme Court in December that centers around Jack Phillips, the owner of the Colorado-based Masterpiece Cakeshop, who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding. But the case doesn’t actually have anything to do with cake—it’s rather an issue that hangs on the line between free speech and discrimination.

Phillips argues his cakes are art, and as such he shouldn’t be forced to make it for anyone he doesn’t want to—including David Mullins and Charlie Craig, who claim that Phillips was discriminating against them because they are gay. But Colorado’s anti-discrimination law says he can’t refuse his service to someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

But the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorneys representing the couple don't concur. “For example, hair salons, tailors, restaurants, architecture firms, florists, jewelers, theaters and dance schools use artistic skills when serving customers or clients,” the ACLU argued in its briefs. 

Written by Ken Janssens and Selisse Berry

Nikki Haley, America's ambassador to the United Nations, issued a statement reaffirming U.S. commitment to non-discrimination and calling for accountability for Chechen authorities who, according to reports, have arbitrarily detained, tortured and killed gay men in concentration camps, thus evoking Nazi Germany's persecution of LGBT people.

Those shocking reports are a reminder of the complex and often dangerous landscape LGBT people face across the globe. In 23 countries same-sex couples can get married, but in 76 countries we can be arrested just for being who we are. Given this paradox of progress and backlash, it's more important than ever to consider the role business leaders can play to shift culture and advance LGBT equality around the world. New research shows how far we've come—though we still have much to do. READ MORE

Written by Letitia Stein


When Mike Lujano and George Lenz hoisted a rainbow flag outside their business in a Victorian brownstone on Market Street two decades ago, they found that few neighbors in socially conservative Wheeling, West Virginia, knew it was a symbol of gay pride. The married owners of Edna's hair salon in this faded industrial city of 28,000 at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains never dreamed that one day they would be at a packed city council meeting, cheering the passage of an ordinance barring discrimination over sexual orientation and gender identity. Defying stereotypes in the U.S. culture wars over lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, Wheeling is among a recent wave of small cities, many in parts of the country that voted for Republican President Donald Trump, to embrace these protections. "We told people this wasn't a bad place," said Lujano, 53, who was in the audience when the ordinance passed in late December. "Finally, this confirmed it."

About 50 U.S. municipalities in 15 states have added LGBTQ nondiscrimination measures since 2015, when same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide. More than half of those cities and towns are located in counties that backed Trump in November's election, and all are in states he won. Local leaders say accepting diversity is not just the right thing to do, but needed to attract jobs and investment. They concede the measures alone may not land a Fortune 500 employer but argue the protections are necessary for smaller markets to appeal to many corporations with LGBTQ-friendly policies.

While the verdict remains out in Wheeling and other places with recently adopted protections, the cost of opposing LGBTQ advancement has run in the hundreds of millions of dollars in North Carolina. Last year the state lost major entertainment events and planned jobs expansions by PayPal and Deutsche Bank in the protests over a state law restricting bathroom access for transgender people.

In Indiana, Vice President Mike Pence's hometown of Columbus saw an all-Republican city council unanimously pass LGBTQ protections after he signed as governor a religion law in 2015 that was widely decried as discriminatory and prompted some conventions to go elsewhere. "Republicans don't speak with one voice on this issue," said Columbus Mayor Jim Lienhoop. "In a small town, you really do live with the laws that you create. It makes it all a little bit more real that we see some people - we actually know them - who might be affected."

Across the United States, 19 states have LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections that typically guard against being fired from jobs, kicked out of housing or denied services in places like restaurants or hotels. Reuters found that about four out of five cities with populations greater than 250,000 are covered with at least some protections. READ MORE

"I was absolutely ecstatic to receive the Stonewall LGBT Role Model of The Year Award when they announced their annual workplace equality index Top 100 earlier this year," writes Jenny Fallover. She adds: "I struggled for a long while to see myself as a role model and then I slowly realized that I did not need anyone’s permission to role model positive behavior on a daily basis. I am going to share some of the things I have learned along the way."

YOU DON’T NEED TO HAVE A SENIOR ROLE IN A COMPANY TO EXUDE A POSITIVE INFLUENCE ON OTHERS
Anyone at any level can have a positive influence in the workplace. Work with your LGBT business resource group on a reverse mentoring program. That way you get exposure to senior leaders and you can help them understand the challenges that LGBT people may face in the workplace.

STEP OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE AS OFTEN AS YOU CAN
I am naturally an introvert but I made a resolution a few years ago to say yes to any opportunity, especially if it made me feel uncomfortable. Not only has it been great for my personal development but I have met some amazing people and had some great experiences as a result.

BE CURIOUS AND LEARN ABOUT OTHER DIVERSITY GROUPS ISSUES AND CHALLENGES
It’s common to be worried about saying the wrong thing or upsetting someone but talk to your colleagues in diversity groups and frame the conversion with something like: ‘I really want to understand more about the challenges LGBT people face but I am worried that I will say the wrong thing. Please do not be offended if I do as I mean no ill intent but do not hesitate to correct me and explain why that was the wrong thing to say’.

START WITH SMALL GESTURES THAT MAKE OTHERS FEEL COMFORTABLE IN THE WORKPLACE
If you are LGBT, have a picture of your partner on your desk or your intranet profile. I have a picture of the ILGA map on my desk and I find it’s a good starting point for conversation around global LGBT rights. If you are an ally make that visible by having related materials like stickers or a desk card. If your company doesn’t have an ally program then find out if you can get involved in starting one.

POLITELY CHALLENGE INAPPROPRIATE SPEECH OR BEHAVIOURS AROUND YOU
More often than not people say the wrong thing but have good intentions. For example, if you hear someone calling something ‘gay’ then explain to them that they may be inadvertently offending colleagues around them by using the term gay with a negative connotation. If you hear clearly homophobic speech then challenge them and try to politely educate them.

BELIEVE IN YOURSELF
When I tentatively stepped into a leadership role in our LGBT business resource group, Pride at Work, I wasn’t confident that I had the right skill sets to take on a leadership role. I spoke to my manager at the time and she really encouraged me to take on the role and I have never looked back since. Trust that if you have a passion for something that you will work hard and do a good job.

Written by Matthew Todd


Although it has never been easier to be Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender, a significant number of LGBT employees are still afraid to ‘come out’ at work because they fear this will lead to harassment and damage their career opportunities. Research supports this fear although figures vary between industries, with some sectors appearing to be more homophobic than others. Many colleagues are too scared to speak up against the homophobic harassment, which they witness others experience. However, there are numerous organisations such as the UK’s leading gay rights charity Stonewall campaigning for LGBT equality and there are many industry-specific and sometimes company-specific LGBT groups. READ MORE

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Written by Hank Trout


“The Movement saved my life.”

With that simple declarative statement, the first sentence in the preface to his long-awaited and just-published memoir When We Rise: My Life in the Movement, Cleve Jones begins to open up his life to us. And what an extraordinary life it has been. We sat down to chat, one long-term survivor of HIV/AIDS to another, about the movement then and now, what we’ve learned and, importantly, what remains to be done.

Cleve was born in 1954, “into the last generation of homosexual people who grew up not knowing if there was anyone else on the entire planet who felt the way that we felt.” Continue reading Hank Trout's great interview with Cleve Jones here.


RELATED Harvey Milk Protégé, AIDS Quilt Creator Cleve Jones on Queer Activism in the Age of Trump

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The North Dakota House has rejected a measure that would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation. The bill was Via defeated 69-22 on Friday, the latest defeat for an idea that's gone down three other times in recent years. Opponents have argued it's unnecessary and could force businesses and religious organizations to go against their own convictions. MORE

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Written by Karen Iris Tucker


Bullies roamed his high school gym class, so Cleve Jones feigned a chronic lung ailment and retreated to the library. It was on one such occasion that he flipped through the magazine that likely saved his life. A headline piqued Jones’ interest: “Homosexuals in Revolt!” It topped a Life report on the nascent gay liberation movement that was taking root in New York and California. The year was 1971.

“I’m pretty sure that was the exact moment I stopped planning to kill myself,” Jones, 62, says in his new memoir, When We Rise: My Life in the Movement. “I took the pills I had been hoarding from their hiding place and flushed them down the toilet.” Until then, Jones says, he had thought there was no one else like him on the planet.

From there, Jones takes readers on his thrilling, if perilous, voyage from fey, long-haired teen hitching his way from his home in Arizona to San Francisco, to becoming the mentee of Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay elected officials in America. Jones survives San Francisco’s viciously homophobic police in the ’70s and, later, the AIDS epidemic that took his dearest friends. In the process, he helps mobilize the anguished, fiery momentum of LGBTQ rights in the United States and also conceives the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. His life story continues to impress; When We Rise is credited as an inspiration for the ABC miniseries of the same name that is expected to premiere in February 2017. Jones was a historical consultant for the TV project but says he hasn’t yet seen it.

It seems only fitting to talk to Jones, a grass-roots political firebrand, at a time when the election of Donald Trump feels like a massive setback for progressive, pro-LGBTQ policies. Describing himself variously as “terrified” and “heartbroken” by the results, Jones is nevertheless unbowed: “The next person to tell me we survived Reagan and Bush is going to get slapped.” READ MORE

RELATED Gay Rights Pioneer, Cleve Jones, Covers A & U

Written by Austin Grabish


First, his friend was beheaded. Then a transgender woman was raped, burned and mutilated. Adam knew he had to leave Turkey, the country that took him in after he had fled Syria. "I think I will be next," he said when he phoned the United Nations in Istanbul, begging for help. Adam, a gay Syrian man, recently arrived in Winnipeg, Canada. Because he fears for his safety and reprisal for speaking out, CBC News is not using his real name. The 26-year-old recalls celebrating when he arrived in Canada. "It was like my dream happened," he said.

Adam left Aleppo in 2011 before starting what became a five-year journey in search of freedom that included relocating to Russia and Turkey. "I'm gay, but this is not acceptable there," Adam said, speaking about Syria and Turkey. He and more than 500 other queer Syrians used a secret Facebook group and underground locations to communicate in Turkey after fleeing to the country from the war in Syria. "From the beginning it was so amazing because we shared our problems, we shared everything." Turkey has taken in many refugees from Syria, but LGBT people are far from free, Adam said.

Violence against members of the LGBT community is common in Turkey, and the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has expressed concern about attacks on queer people in the country. READ MORE

Written by Jonathan Mattise


Sean Henry, the president of Tennessee’s NHL team, is stunned he even has to explain why he hopes state legislators will snub bills similar to North Carolina‘s transgender bathroom law, which has consumed that state for months and scared off businesses and sporting events. The Nashville Predators team is among about 300 companies, ranging from health-care giant HCA to FedEx, joining under the moniker Tennessee Thrives to oppose bathroom and religious objection bills, which they consider discriminatory and bad for business. Companies in other GOP-led states have had success voicing opposition under similar names: Georgia Prospers, Opportunity West Virginia, Missouri Competes. After the United States Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in 2015, social conservatives turned to statehouses, seeking state laws to let businesses, pastors and government refuse services to LGBT people based on their religious objections to same-sex unions. Despite the political and economic repercussions that erupted in North Carolina, the American Civil Liberties Union expects an increase in statehouse proposals limiting LGBT protections in 2017. READ MORE

Written by Will Greenberg


State legislators proposed more than 250 anti-LGBT bills in 2016, more than in any other year since 2009. The most high-profile setback was North Carolina's House Bill 2, which removed anti-discrimination protections for LGBT workers and required trans people to use the bathroom corresponding to their biological sex, not their gender identity. Gov. Pat McCrory and North Carolina's legislators met immediate pushback, losing an estimated $395 million in business in the state and sparking a Justice Department lawsuit. Even so, 14 other states proposed their own bathroom bills this year—though none of them became law. Of the 252 total bills seeking to restrict LGBT rights, only 8 passed.

Even with so many anti-LGBT bills shot down this year, we should expect more to crop up in 2017, particularly "religious freedom" bills and additional laws that discriminate against transgender people. Of course, this is all just at the state level. Donald Trump's administration, along with a prospective Cabinet of LGBT rights opponents, could pose a whole new set of hurdles in the years to come. READ MORE

Written by Editorial | Hartford Courant

The Air Force did an injustice to H. Edward Spires 68 years ago when it interrogated him and booted him out with an "undesirable" discharge only because he is gay. This wrong must be righted now, before it's too late.

Mr. Spires is 91 and frail. Because of his discharge, he is denied all the benefits due veterans, including a military funeral with honors.

Mr. Spires was a chaplain's assistant for two years when he was harshly questioned and ousted in 1948. He is one of an estimated 100,000 members of the military who have been discharged since World War II for being gay. The military has thankfully evolved since those purges. Its 1942 ban of gays was lifted in 2011 by Congress.

But changing the policy didn't undo the damage. Many gay veterans remain branded with the shame of less-than-honorable discharges solely because of their sexuality. Some have succeeded in getting an upgrade. But the painful process can take time and records may no longer exist, as in Mr. Spires' case. He destroyed his out of understandable mortification, and the Air Force may have lost its records in a fire.

Mr. Spires did go on after his discharge to build "a life and a career that have brought joy to those around him," his husband, David Rosenberg, said this past week. He's worked in community theater, and the Norwalk couple have been together nearly six decades. But the stain of a less-than-honorable discharge made him feel ashamed all these years.

He's suffered this humiliation too long. The Air Force needs to give him an honorable discharge now.
_____________________________________________________

MORE COVERAGE

Group of Lawyers at the Yale Veterans Legal Services Clinic are Seeking to Right a 68-year-old Wrong:

They filed a federal lawsuit against the Air Force seeking to upgrade H. Edward Spires' discharge status to honorable, a change that would allow him to have a funeral with military honors.

"The idea that this man of faith who served dutifully as a chaplain's assistant in the armed forces, who built a life and a career that has brought joy to those around him, would leave this earth considered undesirable in the eyes of his country, it's unthinkable," Spires' husband, David Rosenberg, said during a briefing on the case at Yale Law School.

The couple lives in Norwalk; they have been together for nearly six decades, marrying in 2009.

Written by John Kell

The nation's largest food and beverage manufacturers—including PepsiCo, Kellogg and General Mills—are winning high marks for recognizing their LGBTQ work force and adopting inclusive policies for those employees. That was the finding of a new report by the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBTQ civil rights advocacy group.

The report evaluated 1,043 companies based on whether they have inclusive benefits and protections that promote equality for LGBTQ employees, and it found that large consumer product firms score particularly well. Of the 517 U.S. companies that earned 100-point scores, 72 were from the food, beverage and grocery sector.

The HRC report says that more than 90% of the rated businesses have embraced sexual orientation and gender identity employment protections for their U.S. and global operations. A majority of the businesses (86%) offer education and training programs that include definitions and/or scenarios on gender identity in the workplace, while almost 400 businesses have also adopted guidelines for gender transition.

The report said the total number of employers with a top rating for the 2017 index was the largest jump in top-rated businesses in a single year since in the 15-year history of tracking done by the HRC. READ MORE

Written by Matt Broomfield


In a year when David Cameron's been hailed as an LGBT ally, this group are taking back ownership of queer culture's fight against conservatism. Despite what your beloved great-aunt believes, queer people weren't made in a lab in 1996 to piss her off and infiltrate the soaps. A new group have organised a walking tour of queer culture landmarks in London, to make visible history often overlooked rather than let right-wing politicians take credit for magically solving The Gay Problem under David Cameron. The tours don't properly kick off until February 2017. READ MORE

"Clint McCance, a school board member in Arkansas, resigns after posting hateful comments about gays on Facebook. But the episode speaks to a deeper clash over gay rights in the rural South. McCance acknowledges that his comments were hateful. Yet the issue underlying them remains deeply divisive throughout much of the rural South as the push for gay rights takes on some of the aspects of a modern civil rights movement – with small groups attempting to make change on a local level," writes Suzi Parker. "The pushback from conservative Christians, however, remains strong. Some local conservative leaders condemned McCance’s statements and say that the public viewpoint of gays has changed over the years. They stress, however, that the Bible still says homosexuality is a sin." READ MORE

"The member of the Ugandan Parliament behind a controversial "anti-gay" bill that would call for stiff penalties against homosexuality -- including life imprisonment and the death penalty -- says that the bill will become law soon," reports David McKenzie. "We are very confident," David Bahati told CNN, "because this is a piece of legislation that is needed in this country to protect the traditional family here in Africa, and also protect the future of our children." Governments that have donated aid to Uganda and human rights groups applied massive pressure since the bill was proposed a year ago, and most believed that the bill had been since shelved. Not so, says Bahati, adding, "Every single day of my life now I am still pushing that it passes." His statements come in the wake of a global outcry over a tabloid publication of Uganda's "top 100 homosexuals" that included pictures and addresses of Ugandans perceived to be gay. READ MORE